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T¥0 SERMON 



ON THE 



Tragedy, at Harper's Ferry. 




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THE CURSE OF GOD AGAINST POLITICAL ATHEISM : WITH 

SOME OF THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY 

AT HARPER'S FERRY. 



DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED IN THE 



CHURCH OE THE PURITANS, NEW YORK, 



On Sabbath Eyening, Nov. 6, 1859. 



By REV. GEORGE B. CHEEVER, D. D. 



BOSTON: 
WALKER, WISE, & CO 

245 Washington Street. 

1859. 






^ 



PRENTISS, SAWYER, & CO., Printers, , 

19 Water Street, Boston. 



DISCOURSE 



If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light ; but if thine 
eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. — Matt, vi : 22, 23. 



The purpose makes the man, and as a man thinketli in his heart, 
so is he. If for God in his heart, then for God everywhere ; if for 
self and the world in his heart, then for self everywhere. 

Principle and Expediency are the watchwords that divide the 
world as truly and thoroughly as light and darkness, sin and holi- 
ness. But expediency assumes the form and reputation of principle, 
and carries a great part of the world on the side of wrong, under the 
profession of wisdom and conservatism, teaching the right. The 
conflict is fundamental. A selfish expediency is the native habit of 
mankind, and the first battle against it is when a man is converted 
from the power of Satan unto God. When he comes under the 
government of righteous principle, and makes the will of God his 
rule, instead of consulting and obeying what is, or seems to be, expe- 
dient in his own view for his own interest, or convenient for his own 
will and pleasure, he is a converted man — a true Christian. 

lie cannot be a Christian, and remain on both sides the fence, a 
time-server. '' Ye cannot serve God" and Mammon." He cannot 
be a Christian and remain on the fence, waiting to jump with the 
tide of popular applause, or at the suggestion of expediency, and, 
until that decision, serving neither God nor Mammon. He is always, 
however he may stand in this world, and seem to be facing both ways 
in the sight of man, on one side or the other with God, either for 
him or against him. We shall follow our text in its two great 
applications, first to our personal, second to our social and civil or 
political being and life. 



I. — True religion consists in choosing and following what is right, 
and making that in all cases determine what is expedient. I speak 
now of all cases where the question of right, of duty, is involved ; 
for there are many things, many junctures and affairs of life, where 
prudential considerations as to what is best form the whole field of 
consideration, and that which seems to a man's mind on the whole 
most profitable is best, and therefore ought to be pursued, is there- 
fore right. It is right, because it is best. Wherever the balance of 
considerations is merely prudential — as, for example, whether you 
shall take passage for a sea voyage in a sailing vessel or a steam- 
ship, whether you shall embark your capital in one direction or 
another of varied forms of business or investments equally honorable 
and proper ; ten thousand cases might be stated where that which, 
on the whole, you discover or conclude to be best, most advantage- 
ous and convenient for you, is right. It is not best merely because 
it is right, but right because it is best, there being no other moral 
principle involved in it, but a choice of benefits, which is no moral 
jjrinciple at all. And a man Avhose life is confined to such pursuits 
might possibly never be found acting in reference to any moral prin- 
ciple, or any consideration of it whatever ; might live to the age of 
Methuselah, plodding on in business, or running a career of vast 
speculations in business, without ever having his soul stirred by any- 
thing higher than calculations of prudence. In such a case, the very 
absence and negation of moral principle would be the debasement 
and destruction of a man's nature, and the condemnation of his life. 
A life centering on self, absorbed in self, occupied -wholly with self, 
and what is best for self, is a selfish life — a life of self-idolatry — a 
life in which self is the supreme principle, and, God being entirely 
disi'Cgarded, an immoral principle and an immoral life. The entire 
negation of high moral principle constitutes as perfect an immorality 
of character as the presence and power of a positive reigning vice. 
And it may be absolutely more difficult to raise a man up from the 
depths of such negation, from the dungeon of such a tomb, and in- 
spire him with piety, than it is to break in violently upon great and 
raging sins, in which men have been held captive by Satan at his 
will. 

We belong to God, and are bound to regard His will supremely 
in all things, and to seek His approbation, and carry into effect His 
law, both in ourselves and others. The eye single, therefore, is the 
eye that is turned towards Him, while the evil eye is the eye that is 



turned towards self — turned away from God, and filled with self 
instead of God, as the supreme idol. You know that in the language 
of the very proverhs of society there is no more fitting description 
of a mean and worthless creature — a selfish, heartless, unsympa- 
thising man, from whom you can expect nothing good, great, or 
generous — than the phrase that he is always sure to look out for 
number one. Self always comes first between his sight and every- 
thing else under heaven ; and until this depravity is broken and 
conquered, and he is taught and inspired by Divine grace to lose 
sight of self in God, and to say, Not my will, but thine, be done, 
God himself, in his view, and heaven and angels, are nothing but a 
grand contrivance for his own happiness. But when a man begins 
to love God, and to look away from self to Him, then it is happiness 
to him that God reigns ; and as long as God reigns, he cannot be 
otherwise than happy in him, safe and happy in His love. He 
dwells in God and God in him ; and as God is light, and in Him is 
no darkness at all, the whole being of the soul whose sight and 
affections are fixed on Him, is irradiated with His light ; and as 
God is love, so he that dwelleth in God dwelleth in love, and if 
there were no interruption to this communion, would be baptised and 
bathed in the continual blessedness of God, as an experience insep- 
ai'able from his own existence. Such a man is safe and happy, 
everywhere and under all circumstances, in God. He that dwelleth 
in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow 
of the Almighty. He may be the inmate of a dungeon, condemned 
to death by human law, but with God's law and God's love in his 
heart he will be as happy as an angel. 

Thy shining glance can cheer 

The dungeon where I dwell : 
'T is Paradise, if thou art here ; 

If thou depart, 't is hell. 

The path of duty will be made plain to such a man, and he will have 
courage ministered to him from God to Avalk in it, always making 
God's word, God's law, the light, the guide, the arbiter of conscience, 
and always endeavoring, in all things, to maintain a conscience void 
of offence towards God and man. 

For this, two great things are necessary — much prayer, and 
much earnest and prayei'ful study of God's word. Both these 
things are necessary, and if a man neglect either, he is liable to go 



6 

astniy, and while he thinks he is acting from principle, to be acting 
from mistake or from mere selfish expediency. " Thy word have I 
hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee." Prayer hides 
God's word in the heart, and the Holy Spirit abides there with it, 
and leads it into all truth and duty ; and this being the case, a man 
having God's truth for his shield and buckler, and God's Spirit for 
his comforter, has need of nothing else, and need fear nothing. 
Hence the appeal of God, " Hearken unto me, ye that know right- 
eousness — ye people in whose heart is my law ; fear ye not the 
reproaches of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings ; for the 
moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them 
like wool ; but my righteousness shall be forever, and my salvation 
from generation to generation." The righteousness of God is the 
one permanent, eternal reality and rule, and the law of God is the 
manifestation of that righteousness ibr the guidance of human con- 
duct. The law of God is a system of principles. He governs the 
universe upon principles — the pi'inciples of his own righteousness. 
They are of equal and universal application. They are not one 
thing in heaven and another thing on earth ; one thing among God's 
friends, and another thing among his enemies ; they are the same 
everywhere, and the standard of right and wrong is the same on 
earth as it is in heaven. Perfect obedience, supi*eme devotion to 
God, is the rule here, as it is there, and God will have his will done 
on earth as in heaven. The principles of God's law never vary. 
They are as immutable as himself. They never bend to cii'cum- 
stances, but go straight through the universe. They do not come 
into the world to be refracted out of their straight line in the gross 
medium of men's fancies or maxims of convenience or expediency ; 
they cannot alter. Heaven and earth shall pass away before one jot 
or tittle of the law shall fail. As a standard of feeling and action, as 
a standard of right and wrong, as a standard of duty under all cir- 
cumstances, and of judgment in every respect, it is unerring and 
unchanging. Its principles were given forth, not to be judged, criti- 
cised, or evaded by God's creatures, but to be obeyed, and carried 
into unfaltering execution. Their application is not to be prevented 
because of its condemning, overturning consequences in a world of 
sin ; they are to be laid alongside the character and employments of 
men, though, to the anger of all, they make the whole world, with 
their whole business, guilty before God. The least concealment or 
alteration of any one principle of God's law would be of more evil 



in any community than the overturning of that whole community 
could be by carrying out that principle to the uttermost. For 
the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteous- 
ness and ungodliness of men, and especially against those who hold 
the truth in unrighteousness. And the business of the servant of 
Jesus Christ is to make constant application of the law of God, and 
bring its light to blaze and its power to bear upon every form of 
iniquity. 

And although the principles of God's word, taken up resolutely, 
and carried straight through human society, make tremendous work 
with the principles of this world, yet that is the very application 
and overturning that God requires, whose conservatism is just this ; 
the removing of those things that require overturning or may be 
shaken, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. The 
principles of God's word cut across and tear up by the roots whole 
plantations of the most cherished human maxims and laws. They 
do this with such amazing power, w^herever any sinful practice has 
gained the sanction of time, and been winked at by a worldly 
Church, that even churches and ministers are afraid of their opera- 
tion. The consequences of the unbending principles of the Word of 
God are so tremendous in their conflict with human passions, espe- 
cially where sin is legalized and oppression carried on by statute, 
that even the professed friends of God shrink from meeting them. 
Nevertheless, those principles must be applied ; they are our only 
salvation ; the only hope of the world being made better is in them, 
and our only security from being swallowed up in the world's wick- 
edness is in the great breakwater with them breasting the storm, 
when the waters roar and are troubled, and the mountains shake 
with the swelling thereof. The only true expediency is to act from 
principle, to obey God, to obey a conscience enlightened and guided 
by the "Word of God, to ask in all things what God will have us to 
do, and having ascertained the path of duty toward God, to go for- 
ward and do it, leaving the consequences with him. It is no excuse 
for wickedness, though all the world should consent to follow it, and 
though all the statutes of mankind should command us to do the 
same. But by the Word of God alone can we know what is right- 
eousness in principle and righteousness in law. 

And here, in passing, let the importance of the Bible and its teach- 
ings in our common schools be noted, to have the common conscience 
of the nation so ti'ained, to give the nation a common sense and 



8 



knowledge of equity and righteousness, so sturdy, so habitual, that 
tyranny shall quail before it, and legislators not dare the experiment 
of promulgating unrighteous law. Such a conscience, so trained, is 
the strongest, most impregnable safeguard of a nation's liberties. 

II. — Here we advance to the second great branch of our subject. 
Adherence to the law of God, as supreme in political as social life, 
is our only security. It is impossible to describe strongly enough 
the infinite importance, at this present time, for all men, public and 
private, for us as a community and people, of keeping this great 
truth in view, and acting upon it. The most pernicious and alarm- 
ing doctrines are being circulated among us ; doctrines that at one 
and the same time go to the destruction of all conscience towards 
God, and all humanity and justice towards our fellow-beings ; doc- 
trines that take away our very right to demand and enforce free- 
dom and justice against tyranny and injustice, and deprive us of 
the very possibility even of appealing to God against the iniquity 
and oppression of man ; doctrines that deny and annihilate the inhe- 
rent supremacy of conscience, instructed by the Author and Framer 
of our being, over all our actions, and commit that supremacy to the 
absolute sheer will of an oligarcliy in power over us, or of the multi- 
tude who consent to put the will of that oligarchy into the shape of 
law, and then arrogate for it the sanction of the Almighty, at the 
same time announcing our duty to obey it, whether the Almighty 
sanctions it or not ; nay, even though it be against the express in- 
terdict of the living God ; doctrines that at the same time, and by a 
fatal coherence and necessity of logic and of consequence, deny any 
inherent rights but such as are permitted and guaranteed by some 
written human constitution, and in creatures of a sable hue any 
rights at all, if any State or community, by law or declaration, deny 
them, withhold them. Doctrines that, in affirming that so long as 
anything whatever is put in the form of human law, so long its obli- 
gation of obedience is supreme and imperative, (no matter how 
infamous or oppressive the law may be,) take from God himself his 
own sovereignty over us, and from ourselves all right of resistance 
against wickedness in God's name — all possibility of the protection of 
our conscience and our liberties — all remnant of liberty itself woi'th 
possessing — since, by these docti'ines, all that any band of usurpers 
have to do, in order to sanction, confirm, and render immutable and 
eternal their despotism, is to promulgate its principles and pretences 



in a constitution, anrl pass its requisitions in the shape of law, which, 
wliile it stands, is imperative, and of which they can forever prevent 
the alteration or repeal. The whole scheme is one of complete 
pi'actical atheism ; and hell itself, the empire of Satan, would need 
no better foundation against the authority of the Lord Almighty. 

Yet it has been shamelessly promulgated, in so many words, that 
the constitution of the people, their political constitution, is their 
Bible ; and this for the purpose of defending the right of the govern- 
ment to pass, and the duty of the people to obey, one of the most 
inhuman, unchristian, irreligious, savage statutes, that, under the 
light of God's word, and in defiance and violation of his law, ever 
was passed on earth. It is not only affirmed that, their political 
constitution is their Bible, but that any law whatever, which the 
legislature may please to pass, under the pretended sanction of that 
constitution, however wickedly perverted, and concerning which 
they can get it affirmed by a bench of judges that, in their opinion, it 
is constitutional, has an obligation of obedience attached to it above 
God's law — the Bible of God being supreme only in and for 
heaven, while the political Bible is supreme on earth, and so su- 
preme that no appeal from it can be taken to God's Bil)le, so 
supreme that God's law cannot be quoted as above it — cannot be 
permitted to have any authority over the conscience under it. A 
people that will give way to such doctrines, that will applaud the 
speeches and the teachings in which they are conveyed, that will vote 
for men and put men in power who proclaim them, and signify their 
readiness and determination to enforce them, are as fast as possible 
cutting off all possibility of protecting their own liberties — are forg- 
ing chains and manacles for their own souls, are offering up them- 
selves on the altar of national atheism as the prey of tyrants, are on 
the eve of that irremediable betrayal and renouncement of their own 
inheritance of freedom, their birthright from God, of which there is 
no place for repentance, and after which there is no hope ; of which 
God himself says, they have chosen their own way, I also will 
choose tlieir delusions ; they have chosen the statutes of Omri, and 
the statutes of Omri shall be their ruin. 

The extreme of baseness and treachery towards God and man, to 
which these advocates of human tyranny have gone, is almost incredi- 
ble. There are those who not only assert that any and every human 
law has the authority of heaven, and that men are bound to obey it 
so long as it is law, whether it be contrary to God's law or not, but 
2 



10 

even that we have no right to go against any wrong, any wicked- 
ness, which a human constitution protects, and orders us not to 
interfere with, or which it is even asserted by the judges to protect, 
or which is by them pronounced constitutionah Here these men tie 
up our hands, and we, if we admit such pretensions of ungodliness, 
tie up our own hands, not only from all right and possibility of self- 
defence, if our own liberties are by pretended law taken from us, 
but from the equally sacred and grander and more noble and glori- 
ous right and duty of defending others, and protecting others from 
wrong and ruin. Could anything be more monstrous, more heaven- 
defying, than the doctrine that because a wrong or impiety is a 
vested wrong, secured by a constitution and laws in its favor, there- 
fore we are cut off from all right of interfering against it, or claim- 
ing the rights of the victims crushed under it, or insisting upon their 
deliverance from such oppression ? 

Especially, could anything be more monstrous than such an athe- 
istic claim in behalf of wrong, for immunity from examination and 
redress under a government professing to acknowledge God and his 
word and the religion of the Bible as of supreme authority, and 
professing distinctly to have been framed for the protection of the 
liberties and rights of every human being under it, to establish jus- 
tice and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our poster- 
ity ; a constitution framed under an appeal to God, under a declara- 
tion that our very title to the state and dignity of a nation is drawn 
from the laws of nature and of nature's God, and under the promul- 
gation of these truths as self-evident, that all men are created equal ; 
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable 
rights ; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- 
ness ; that to secure these rights governments are instituted among 
men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed ; 
that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these 
ends, it is the right of the people to alter it or to abolish it, and to 
institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles 
and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most 
likely to effect their safety and ha{)piness. The less is always inclu- 
ded in the greater ; and if the people have power and right to change 
or to abolish their constitution when its action is perverted to the 
support and protection of wrong, much more have they the right and 
power to resist such perversion ; much more is the resistance of such 



11 

perversion their bounden duty and the duty of those who are called 
to administer the government. 

If the government be framed for the establishment of justice and 
the protection of liberty for all, and of the just rights of all who are 
set under it by the Creator, then the constitution of such a govern- 
ment — a government meant for such purposes — and just only 
while it adheres to them, cannot be assumed to sanction any wrong 
in conflict with them, or to forbid the resistance and removal of any 
wrong, of which in spite of its object, and against the authority of 
God, from whom alone its sanction is derived, the constitution is 
perverted to become the instrument. It is, therefore, monstrous to 
say that we will go against wi-ong only so far as the constitution 
permits us to go against it ; for in the first place, the Almighty has 
commanded us to go against all wrong, and especially so to adminis- 
ter government as that God's rights, and the rights of conscience 
towards God and justice to every creature may be protected by it ; 
and in the second place, the rights bestowed upon men from theii* 
Creator are asserted, by the very declaration under which and in 
pursuance of which the constitution has been framed, to be inalien-' 
able ; and, therefore, the constitution itself binds those who admin- 
ister it, as well as the people who must watch over its operation, to 
go against any wrong which is against those rights, and not to suffer 
any law in behalf of such wrong to be executed. 

Every sufferance of such execution, every lending of themselves, 
either on the part of magistrate or people, as instruments of such 
wrong in the name of law, and under the pretence of law, is just 
the deliberate commission of two crimes instead of one. First, it is 
the transaction of the original crime — injustice, inhumanity — 
which is a sin against both God and man ; and second, it is the 
practice of the crime in the name of law, which is an added sin, 
especially against God, and is the daring assertion that human law 
is higher than the Divine. It is not only the practice of the sin, 
which is an act of disobedience against God and cruelty towards 
man, but it is the teaching of such disobedience to others, the en- 
forcement of it by law against God's law. And God himself says, 
that while he who shall be guilty of breaking any one of his com-' 
mandments shall be punished according to his crime, he that shall 
not only do but also teach such crime, such violation, shall be utterly 
cast out from the kingdom of heaven. And our blessed Lord con- 
demned in the strongest terms the Scribes and Pharisees and rulers 



12 



of the nation because they had dared, under pretence of God's au- 
tliority, to do and to teach things contrary to God's law, or which 
made God's law of none effect, perverting and setting aside its au- 
thority. And no wonder ; for God has said, in that very book out 
of which our blessed Lord drew and expounded his own commission 
as the Messiah and preacher of righteousness, that the throne of 
iniquity shall not have fellowship with him which frameth mischief 
by a law. 

And the whole Word of God, both Old and New Testament, 
burns, blazes, with intensest fire of Divine anger, against this com- 
plication of atheism towards God and cruelty towards man. In 
very many ways it is so reprobated, that none can possibly mistake ; 
none following and obeying man rather than God can possibly plead 
ignorance or innocence. 

Wo unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write 
grievousness which they have prescribed, to turn aside the needy 
from judgment and to take away the right from the poor among the 
people. Wo unto them that justify the wicked for reward, and take 
away the righteousness of the righteous from him. Wo unto them 
that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, bind it with unrighteous law, 
and bind their sin about as with a cart rope. Oh, my people, they 
which lead thee cause thee to err and destroy the way of thy paths ; 
and the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth him- 
self to such commanded wickedness ; therefore forgive them not. 
Therefore my people are gone into captivity ; therefore hell hath 
enlarged herself and opened her mouth Avithout measure, as must 
always be the case when the way of sin, which is the Avay of hell, is 
established by law, and your very rulers and political guides ciy out 
that you have no right to interfere with it and nothing to do but to 
obey it, because with a great lie they swear that it is in the consti- 
tution. But wo unto them that call evil good and good evil ; that 
put darkness for light and light for darkness. 

And how fearfully literal, how appalling in the exactness of their 
application to our sin, in the various forms of exasperation assumed 
by it, are the curses, embodied and distributed in the Word of God. 
It is terrible to note them, and to observe that Ave ourselves not only 
justify but claim and compel their utmost application, by our renewal 
and justification of the very identical crimes against Avhich they were 
first issued. Cursed be he that removeth his neighbor's landmark : 
and all the people shall say, amen ! With what a SAveep of wicked- 



13 



ness was the sin subject to this curse transacted by us as a nation^ 
wlien the grand and sacred landmark of millions, protecting them 
from the abominations and cruelties of Slavery, securing them from 
the possibility of that wickedness ever entering among them, was 
broken down, obliterated, annihilated ; and the people, instead of 
applying God's curse against the treachery of such a removal, con- 
sented to it, through their senators and representatives. And now 
they reap the fruits of such a treacherous consent. 

Cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander out of the way : 
and all the people shall say, amen ! Cursed be he that perverteth 
the judgment of the stranger, fatherless, and widow : and all the 
people shall say, amen ! The judgment of the stranger ! 
We have turned it into wormwood. "VYe have taken the stranger, 
and the whole race of strangers, African strangers, and by the color 
of the skin have branded them as outcasts, dehumanized, chattel- 
ized, food only for the cruelty and avarice of oppressing States and 
traders in human flesh, denied all the rights of humanity, denied the 
existence of any rights that white men are bound to respect, law 
itself having been contrived for them, only as a cage, or a wheel, or 
an iron rack, to maim, to debase, and injure them. We have treated 
them with such concentrated, appalling, and complicated cruelty and 
wickedness, that the very name of stranger, God's sacred seal and 
claim for benevolence, mercy, protecting justice, is but a watchword 
of inhumanity and crime, at the very pronouncement of which there 
passes before the soul such a long procession of horrors, such an 
array of the vastness and detail of national and individual injustice 
and legalized barbarity, that the mind is almost maddened by the 
vision. And God hath said, in reference to all this, and to the sen- 
tence of moral assassination issued against the race of strangers from 
our Supreme National Tribunal of Justice, Cursed be he that 

PERVERTETH THE JUDGMENT OF THE STRANGER ! 

Then again. Cursed be he that smiteth his neighbor secretly : and 
all the people shall say, amen ! Cursed be he that taketli rcAvard to 
slay an innocent person : and all the people shall say, amen ! Come 
forward, ye that are guilty of this wickedness, and receive your 
appointed sentence at the hand of God. Hear this, ye that by legal- 
izing the wickedness, by pleading a commission for it in human 
Courts, by sanctioning its mischief as being framed by law, intend 
to gain the reward of such iniquity, and to escape the curse ! Hear 
this, ye marshals of a base, atrocious enactment of human cruelty 



14 



against the innocent fugitive from bondage, ye man-hunters, ye 
human hounds, basest of all villains that ever for reward give them- 
selves up as go-betweens and cat's-paws for Satan's purposes, for the 
avarice, lust, and tyranny of wicked men ! Cursed be he that taketh 
reward to slay an innocent person ! Your hounding and betraying 
of the Fugitive Slave, for the price of blood, is that slaying of his 
personality, which is set of God in the category of crime as equal 
with that of murder, and worthy of death. 

And these atrocities could never have existed in our statute books, 
could never have been endured by the conscience of the people, nor 
ever could such impious daring and defiance against God and man 
have risen to such a pitch of atheism among our legislators and 
rulers, to be claimed as having the sanction of heaven, and setting 
aside and nullifying the divine law, except under the concealment, 
silence, and practical denial of that law, in these very respects, even 
by the church and ministry. Had the church and ministry spoken 
out at the beginning, and continued their testimony, had they, trust- 
ing in God and faithful to him, applied the fire of his word against 
this sin from the outset, it never could have risen to such a pitch of 
universal and desperate depravity ; it would have been stayed and 
utterly abolished, long ere the present crisis. But now the word 
and authority of God are deliberately set aside, and the law of this 
wickedness is proclaimed as higher than the Highest. " Therefore," 
saith an avenging God, " as the fire devourerii the stubble, and the 
flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and 
their blossom shall go up as dust, because they have cast away 
the law of the Lord, and despised the Word of the Holy One of 
Israel." 

■ Now, what are we to say to these things ? Do we imagine, my 
friends, can we deceive ourselves so far as to dream, that a nation 
guilty of such practical atheism, under the compai'ative dimness of 
the old dispensation, could be cast forth from God's presence and 
blessing, and laden with such retributive curses, and that we, a 
Christian nation, under so much clearer light, with their own exam- 
ple before us as a warning, and their punishment as a proof, can 
escape, can be let off, under our commission of the same guilt ? Is 
the casting away of the law of the Lord, and the setting up of a 
political idol of iniquity in its place, any less hateful in His sight, 
any more endurable in us than it was in them ? Can we, of all na- 
tions of the earth, be such atheists and not be punished for it ? Has 



15 



that whicli was sin among the Jews become righteousness among 
the Gentiles ? Can an iniquity become righteous now by State 
sanction, by political platforms, which was only doubled in its ini- 
quity and immensely exasperated, even then, by the very attempt to 
claim for it the guardianship of the State, and to set it under sanc- 
tion of the law ? Nay, the Lord will enter into judgment with the 
rulers and the princes of the people. Thy princes are rebellious 
and companions of thieves. Every one loveth gifts, and followeth 
after rewards. They judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause 
of the stranger nor the oppressed come unto them ; but they dare to 
say, our party is the white man's party ; and as to the negro, we are 
not our brother's keeper ; but it is a false accusation against us that 
we wish to have anything to do with the protection of the rights of 
the blacks ; and so have you taught cruelty and wickedness and re- 
bellion against the Lord, and have attempted to set the assassination 
of the rights of a whole race of your fellow beings in jour very 
constitution, as a compacted bond of such wickedness. Therefore, 
hear the Word of the Lord, ye scornful men, that rule this people. 
Because ye have said, we have made a covenant with death, and 
with hell are we at agreement, when the overflowing scourge shall 
pass through it shall not come unto us, for we have made lies our 
refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves ; therefore, thus 
saith the Lord : Judgment will I lay to the line, and righteousness 
to the plummet, and the hail shall sweep away your refuges of lies, 
and the waters shall overflow your hiding place ; and your covenant 
with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall 
not stand ; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye 
shall be trodden down by it. 

Any compact with wickedness is an agreement with hell, but espe- 
cially the pretence of such a compact, binding you to the extremest 
cruelty and injustice, in a covenant setting out with the declaration 
that it is for the more perfect establishment of justice and of free- 
dom. The pretence of law for such rascality is only a vast exasper- 
ation of the villany, and the moi'e law for such wickedness the less 
justice, the less sacredness, and the greater the obligation to resist 
such wickedness when it is taught in high places, and pretended to 
be sanctioned by the authority of law ; for when this is the case, and 
men, in the name of God, do not resist, then everything goes rapidly 
to ruin ; and as the prophet of the Lord declax'ed, in this very case 
of old, except God raised up some gap men in this breach, except 



16 



the Lord of Hosts bad left unto us a very small reninant, we should 
have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah. 
Therefore, hear ye the Word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom ; give 
ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah. To what 
purpose is the multitude of your sacriflces unto me ? saith the Lord. 
"When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your 
hand, to tread my courts ? Bring no more vain oblations. Your 
Sabbaths and your calling of assemblies I cannot away with. It is 
iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your appointed feasts my soul 
hatetli. And when ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine 
eyes from you ; yea, when ye make many prayers I will not hear, 
for your hands are full of blood. Wash ye, make you clean, put 
away tlie evil of your doings from before mine eyes, cease to do 
evil, learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge 
the fatherless, plead for the widow ; open thy mouth for the dumb, 
in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction ; open thy 
mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy. 
But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword, for 
the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. 

When will our own country and people once lay these things to 
heart ? In what way, by what method of warning, of arrest, can we 
be made to feel that not even to Israel of old were these truths so 
appropriate, by reason of their sins, as on account of our sins they 
are to us ? Will nothing move us, nothing awaken us, nothing bring 
us to repentance ? Are we so insensate, so drunken with our pros- 
perity, so mad upon our idols, as to imagine that we can take the 
very same sins on account of which God swept the Jews from the 
face of the earth, and not only practice them individually, but teach 
and command them, by law, enshrine them in our tribunals of justice, 
maintain them as elements of our religion and manifestations of God's 
righteousness, and still go on with impunity in such a career, and 
escape God's wrath ? Even amidst the distant thunder of the coming 
tempest, wliile the big drops are falling that forerun the storm, under 
the very discipline of God's preliminary pliigue, the blood at Har- 
per's Ferry being only the precursor of the blood of the first born, 
if the American Pharaoh, with Jannes and Jambres, resisting God, 
refuse to set his people free ; even thus and now, we are ])ublicly 
taught that man is to be obeyed i-ather than God, that the wicked 
laws of men must be sustained and followed, no matter what becomes 
of God's law, for that law is so sacred a thing, and so important to 



17 

be preserved in its majesty, that while it is law, though ever so 
opposed to God's word, it must be fulfilled. But the only majesty 
of law is the majesty of God's authority, God's righteousness, and if 
divested of that, if contrary to that, then the only obligation upon us 
is that of disobeying and denouncing it. God's law indeed must be 
fulfilled, and man's law, if contrary to God's law, must be disobeyed ; 
and this is the only way to preserve a just respect for the government, 
or a remnant of human freedom on the earth. Yet these atheists 
tell us, " Obey even the bad law while it is a law, until it be re- 
pealed!" As if any tyrant on earth, or oppressive government, 
would ever repeal one of their unrighteous enactments, so long as 
they found the people willing to obey them. As if Nebuchadnez- 
zar's law of image-worship would ever have been repealed if Shad- 
rach, Meshach, and Abednego, instructed by our modern politicians, 
had consented to obey it, and had taught the people to obey it while 
it was a law. Or as if the decree of Darius against prayer to God, 
in the law of the Medes and Persians, would ever have been re- 
pealed, had Daniel, according to the same atheistic teachings, obeyed 
it so long as it was a law ; had he not disobeyed it, in the name of 
God, and gone into the lion's den in consequence, just as Shadrach, 
Meshach, and Abednego into the fiery furnace. They broke up the 
tyranny by breaking the law, and that was the God-inspii-ed and 
commanded method of protesting against it. 

All the threatenings of God's wrath against the Jews, and the 
whole record of their fulfillment, are pages for our warning and in- 
struction, to avoid the same sins, or meet the same retribution. All 
this hath the mouth of the Lord spoken for us, and we are on the 
verge of the same ruin, except we repent. K the justice of an in- 
censed God was executed upon them, let none imagine that we shall 
be spared. When the Lord Jesus came unto his own, and re-pro- 
mulgated God's violated laws, he found the leprosy of the nation 
hidden even in the Church. 



Stiff in the letter, lax in the design, 
And import of tlieir oracles di\ane. 
Their learnmg legendary, false, absui'd, 
And yet exalted above God's own Avord, 
They drew a curse from an intended good, 
Puffed up with gifts they never understood ; 
He judged them with as terrible a frown. 
As if not love, but wrath, had brought him down. 
3 



18 



Yet he was gentle as soft siimmcr airs, 

Had grace for others' sins, but none for theirs. 

The temple and its holy rites profaned 

By mnmmerics, He that dwelt in it disdained, 

Uplifted hands, that at convenient times 

Could act extortion, and the worst of crimes, 

Washed with a neatness scrupulously nice, 

And free fi-om every taint but that of vice. 

Shall we despise the warning and the lesson, or lay it to heart ? 
When men, through covetousness, with feigned words, make mer- 
chandise of you, and ye jDermit and sanction, and perpetuate by law, 
the making merchandise of men, be sure that your judgment now of 
a long time lingereth not, and your damnation slumbereth not. Let 
the inspired Christian Poet continue his strain. Judgment, however 
tardy, mends her pace — 

When obstinacy once has conquered grace. 
But grave dissemblers cannot understand 
That sin let loose speaks punishment at hand. 

Oh, Israel ! of all nations most undone ! 
Thy diadem displaced, thy sceptre gone ; 
Cry aloud, thou that sitteth in the dust. 
Cry to the proud, the cruel and unjust ; 
Knock at the gates of nations, rouse their fears ; 
Say wrath is coming and the storm appears. 

Their glory faded, and their race dispersed. 
The last of nations now, though once the first, 
They warn and teach the proudest, Avould they learn, 
Keep wisdom, or meet vengeance in your tiu'n. 
If we escaped not, if Heaven spared not us. 
Peeled, scattered and exterminated thus, 
K vice received her retribution due. 
When we were visited, what hope for you ? 

What hope, indeed ! Let the fulfillment of the curses that have 
been summoned from the law of God answer, recorded for our 
warning in the divine history. It is a terrible array ; but it is not 
to be denied that no small portions both of the Old and New Testa- 
ments are occupied with these vivid expressions of divine justice, 
these avenging lightnings of God's violated law. 

It is not to be denied that God set forth these maledictions to be 
a power against sin, and a terror to evil-doers, and they do possess 
an efficacy when every other method would have failed. God meant 



19 

tliem to be applied. But a man cannot be fitted to deal with the 
divine curses as they ought to be used, without the same Holy Spirit 
in his heart by whose influence they Avere inspired. They are a 
sharp two-edged sword, and without the spirit of heaven-inspired 
love, a man may cut himself with it oftener than he does God's ene- 
mies, and he will be just as likely to grasp it by the blade as by 
the handle. Hence the great significance of the catalogue of a 
Christian's armor, in the sixth chapter of Paul's Epistle to the 
Ephesians, where the detail begins with the truth as a girdle, and 
righteousness as a breastplate, and the feet shod and quickened with 
the glad tidings of peace, and the shield of faith and the helmet of 
salvation ; all these personal graces, elements of Christian experi- 
ence m possession, in wearing and use, before the mention of the 
sword of the spirit as the weapon of war, and then follows prayer as 
always to be used inseparable from the whole. 

Here is great instruction. If we would wield the Sword of the 
Spirit, which is the Word of God, with a divine, irresistible effi- 
cacy, we must have the spirit of that sword in our own hearts. 
We must know its power in living faith and experience, that we 
may cut and smite with it in every direction, in the right way. 
This is our energy unto salvation. This is the secret of success 
and permanence in every true reform. These are the weapons, 
and this is the spirit and temper of every true religious reformer. 
We must trust in God, and smite with his Word, and in him we 
shall conquer. But if we cast aside his Word, or if, without its 
spirit in our hearts, without a supreme regard to it, as our su- 
preme rule, and to him who gave it, as our guardian and guide^ 
we go forward in the strength of mere common philanthropy ; 
especially if because a treacherous portion of the visible Church 
of God have perverted his Word to the sanction of sin, and receiv- 
ed iniquity to their protection and embrace, we therefore suffer 
ourselves to lose our hold on God, our confidence in his truth, and 
throw away the Christian armor in this conflict, — then are we 
sure to be defeated ; for except the Word of God be applied 
against this gigantic sin, nothing can cope with it ; the edge of 
every other weapon will be turned. The Word of God is quick 
and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sAvord against sin, 
and if the Church and the ministry would use it faithfully, trusting 
in God, sin would be conquered. Its sharpest edge is to be used, 
and it is not to be wreathed with flowers nor handled deceitfully, 



20 



nor the trowel of Ezekiel's false prophets to be substituted for it, 
daubing with untempered mortar. Used as God gave it, it lias a 
power, even against the atheism and inhumanity of Slavery, that 
nothing else can have. 

I say, used as God gave it, applied with all its native pungency 
and power, no hearkening to the cry, prophecy unto lis smooth 
things, no concealment of the message, nor handling of the Word 
of God deceitfully, but according to his own command. Diminish 
not a word ; my words, every one of them, whether men will hear 
or forbear ; my word, as the fire and the hammer against sin, with 
a " Thou art the man," and " Thus saith the Lord," to the sinner. 
I say, used as God gave it. Some good people are fearfully and 
sanctimoniously set against applying the denunciations of God in 
the case of great and popular sins, and are very piously horrified, 
(the editors of some religious newspapers especially,) with the 
bitterness of such denunciations ; prophecy not unto us right 
things, prophecy smooth things, prophecy deceits. But God gave 
these denunciations to be applied, not to be disavowed, nor evad- 
ed ; and they have a force, in the right place, and an authority, 
that nothing else can have. Suffer me here to present you Avith 
an illustration of the eiRcacy of such plain speaking, when honeyed 
words, and a soft and flattering tongue, would have been the 
devil's stratagem. The anecdote Avas given me by a venerable 
Christian of the persuasion to^ whom it refers, and it is pointed 
and powerful. In the work of the Abolition of Slavery, by the So- 
ciety of Friends in one of the Southern States, there was at first 
great difficulty and opposition. In one of their stormy discus- 
sions, an influential Quaker, who still held on to his Slave 
property, when it was insisted that they must all relinquish it, 
and the most persuasive argvmients had been employed in vain, 
arose and declared that they had no right to make such a demand 
upon him, that his Slaves were as truly his property as his oxen, 
and that it was not obligatory on him to give up the one more 
than the other. Indignant at this assertion, another brother arose 
to answer him, and said : ■•' Friend, that speech of thine came 
right out from the very belly of hell, yea, from the very belly of 
hell thou hast brought this speech." On their assembling the next 
morning, the man thus pungently rebuked said to his reproving 
brother : " Friend, thou didst hurt my feelings ; thou didst mucli 
distress me by thine unkind speaking. I could get no sleep all 



21 



night for thy bitterness." " Friend," said his neighbor, " if thou 
hast been distressed I am glad of it ; I am glad thou couldst not 
sleep, and I hope to God thou never wilt sleep again till thou hast 
freed thy Slaves." And he could not sleep again, and did not, 
till he had freed his Slaves ; but had it not been for the faithful 
reproof of his brother he might have kept them to this day. 

Read the twenty- seventh chapter of Deuteronomy, and then say 
for what purpose were these curses given, and to whom were they 
committed for use and application. To the Church and the min- 
istry, for a great, wise, most merciful and good purpose, against 
the cruel, remorseless, gigantic sins of men and nations ; against 
oppressors and those who sanction their villanies. It is the busi- 
ness of the Church and ministry to apply these withering denunci- 
ations, just as God gave them, to the precise sins which he has 
catalogued and classified there and elsewhere for their reprobation. 
They are tremendous weapons, which those only can use aright 
who are themselves inspired with God's love, and therefore know 
how to hate what God abhors and has forbidden. 

They who do not hate Avhat God hates, and who refuse to resist 
and oppose what God has commanded them to oppose, are false 
in their profession of love. They do not know how to love what 
is good and holy, unless they hate and abhor what is wicked, un- 
just, and oppressive. Who are they that dare step between God's 
truth and the sinner, to shield him from its reprobation ? Who 
dare interfere with the maledictions of God's Word, and forbid or 
deny their application to the very identical crimes and the precise 
characteristics and personages, pointed out for such fire ? 

It is for the Church and the ministry to obey God, and in be- 
half of the oppressed, smite the rebelliovis and stout-hearted 
oppressor. God has revealed his most terrible, most awful decla- 
rations against such wickedness, on purpose for his people to apply 
them against those who are guilty of it. But if such who profess 
to have been the recipients of his grace refuse this mission, then 
let them refrain from denouncing, in their turn, those who, perhaps 
without the spirit of love, but to supply their treachery, take up 
the burden of those curses, and seem to occupy themselves wholly 
with them. If the Church do not curse at God's command, in 
sympathy with him, out of love, and in the spirit of righteous 
indignation in behalf of the oppressed and against the oppressor, 
then the world will curse, the heart of agonized humanity will 



22 

curse, out of nothing but -wrath and hatred. If the Church and 
ministry refuse to apply these denunciations of God against sin, 
then the world will take them up and scatter them as firebrands, 
arrows, and death. If the Church do not use them as God intend- 
ed, men out of the Church, driven into infidelity by the Cburch 
sanctioning sin, wiU brandish them with mere natural revengeful 
passion and heat. If this fire be not kindled on God's altar, in 
God's fireplace, the devil will scatter it all about the house. Or if 
conservative saints jump upon the safety-valve, to confine the 
steam and prevent the noise, then no wonder if it explodes to 
men's destruction. It is thus that such a man as John Brown, of 
Osawatomie, was thrown from his balance and driven to a course 
of desperation. The Church and the ministry would not give vent 
to that fire which God has committed to them for application 
against sin, and the consequence was, that a double portion of it 
in his soul exploded. 

I have recently had the opportunity of learning something of 
John Brown's integrity and nobleness of character, both native 
and Christian, from his sister, a woman of Christian dignity and 
refinement ; confident, that amidst all his enemies and trials, even 
unto death, her brother, under the ban of human law, human 
tyranny, employs the consolations of the presence of his Saviour. 
She described the boyhood and youth of her brother, as weU as 
his riper Christian career, as being marked by one characteristic 
especially, above the train of common men, a keen sensitiveness 
to the wickedness and cruelty of injustice and wrong, a sensitive- 
ness both of conscience and of feeling for the right against the 
wrong, above what she ever knew in any other person. And the 
thoroughness, uprightness, and consistency of his Christian char- 
acter no man doubted that knew him. He was a man of prayer. 
And he believed himself to be under the guidance of God in his 
efforts against Slavery, and in behalf of the enslaved. He may 
have carried this feeling, this assurance, to the degree of supposing 
himself commissioned, here and now, for just such a violent and 
desperate raid against this atheistic and tyrannical wickedness, 
just where it is defying God and trampling upon man with impu- 
nity ; commissioned, not only with the general and particular 
revelations of God's wiU and of the Christian's duty against such 
gigantic sin, but to lift up the standard as he has done with such 
unquestionable courage and heroism, in literal fulfillment of the 



23 



injunction to resist nnto blood, striving against sin. We may 
rightly lay the responsibility of his mistakes, and, (if any man 
dare brand it as fanaticism to have and to exercise snch extreme 
hatred against Slavery,) of his fanaticism in this matter, upon tlic 
insensibility and treachery of those who ought long ago to have 
fought against this wickedness, and conquered and abolished it, 
with the Word and Spirit of the Living God, but who have not 
only refused to oppose it, but taken it to their own embrace, and 
sanctioned it as a Christian institution, not only refusing all sym- 
pathy in behalf of the oppressed, but espousing and defending the 
cause of the oppressor. Such a soul as John Brown's could not 
endure such appalling wickedness, especially when the iron entered 
into his own heart, through the bodies of his own murdered chil- 
dren, and the destruction of desolated households. 

A silent, conservative, treacherous church and ministry compel 
such a soul to do more, to feel more, to hate more, than its sensitive 
organization can bear ; and it very naturally may give way under 
the pressure. If the church and ministry had done their duty, John 
Brown would have done no more than his ; John Brown would have 
been found with the church, directing the gi-eat guns of God's W^ord 
against the sin of Slavcholding, and not at Harper's Ferry with carnal 
weapons. Let not those professed Christians who have neglected 
their duty presume to utter one word against that martial hero for 
having overdone his. The dumb dogs that never even yelped against 
Slavery are deep-mouthed in their denunciations of him. The man 
has committed no treason, but the silent church and ministry have. 
If the man should be hanged, it is their treason, not his own, for 
which he suffers. They who have sanctioned the iniquity and cru- 
elty against which he has been fighting are the traitors, and the 
anguish of such treachery, if such a man brooded long over it, 
might have driven him almost mad, even if tbe murder of his own 
children had not been added to it. The inactivity and treachery 
of the church, amidst the prevalence of such enormities, drive 
some men into infidelity, but not a man whose communion is with 
God, not a true Christian such as John Brown is said to be ; the 
mischief with him seems to have been that the failure and treach- 
ery of others, their unfaithfulness to God and the enslaved, filled 
him with more fire than he could keep within the bounds of wis- 
dom and prudence. It is the declaration of divine inspiration 
itself that oppression maketh a wise man mad. Let those that are 



24 

without sin cast the first stone ; and depend upon it God had rather 
see such men made mad in such a way, than see the cowardice and 
treachery of the church, sanctioning oppression, and denying his 
Word. 

Jolm Brown lias committed no treason, for he owed no allegiance 
to Virginia. And how could he commit treason when his sole ob- 
ject was to free the Slave ? How commit treason in going against 
a wickedness which God had forbidden, and which faithfulness to 
God's Word compelled him to oppose ? If John Brown, trusting 
in his Saviour, comes under that category of the wise men made 
mad by oppression, John Brown is safe in the loving protection of 
his Father. John Brown is received of God, though outlawed by 
those whose very government is itself a piracy against God's gov- 
ernment, " framing mischief by a law," crushing and destroying 
the rights, families, and lives of innocent men, and putting to 
death men who choose to obey God rather than man. Men can 
only degrade themselves, and stamp their own pretended justice 
with eternal infamy, in hanging such a man upon the gallows. 
But they cannot harm him ; he is safe with God ; and we are safe 
only in obedience to God. 

The great lesson of the tragedy is this : If the men of peace will 
not apply God's law against the sin of Slaveholding, in the shape 
of argument and earnest truth and the maledictions of God, the 
men of war will put it in the shape of bullets, and fight it out, 
and God will let them. Most of the wars in this world have risen 
from the scarcity and unfaithfulness of Christian warriors ; for if 
they will but fight God's battles with the sword of the spirit, which 
is the Word of God, God himself promises that even men of vio- 
lence shall turn their swords into ploughshares, and their spears 
into pruning hooks, and the nations shall learn war no more. God 
grant that this consummation may come ! But for us it never can 
come, if we hold on to our sins, if we do not apply the thunder 
and lightning of God's Word persistently, from the pulpit, on the 
Sabbath, and in every possible' way, against this most stupendous 
of crimes against God and man, entrenched as it is in the bosom 
of the visible church, and enthroned on the Tribunal of our Su- 
preme Jvistice ! 



CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE AFFAIR AT 
HARPER'S FERRY. 



SERMON 



PREACHED IN THE INDIANA PLACE CHAPEL, 



SUNDAY MORNING, NOV. 6, 1859, 



By JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. 



BOSTON: 

V^ALKER, \VISE, & OO 

245 Washington Street. 
1859. 



t^j.^ 



i— 



f'7 



PRENTISS, SAWYER, & CO., Peinters, 
19 Water Street, Boston. 



1 



SERMON. 



There is but one subject upon which we can think this morning. 
Last Wednesday, a man was sentenced to death on the charge of 
exciting Slaves to Insurrection, of Treason against the State of 
Virginia, and of Murder. Probably many technical objections 
might fairly be raised against the verdict, and against the conduct 
of the Court. But his conviction was a foregone conclusion — it 
could not be avoided. Men who do such things as he did, set 
their life on a cast, and must be ready to stand the hazard of the 
die. He was thus ready — he is ready. From first to last he has 
shown no wavering, no desire to save his life. His whole course 
has been so convincingly conscientious, manly, truthful, and 
heroic, that his enemies have been compelled to honor him. For 
the first time within our memory, the whole North and South 
seem to be united in one opinion and one sentiment — the opinion 
that this attempt of Brovv-n was unwise and unwarranted — the 
sentiment of respect for the man himself, as a Hero. 

You have heard little from this pulpit upon the subject of 
Slavery for several years. In that time I have scarcely alluded to 
it ; never spoken upon it at length. The reason of my abstinence 
was simply this, that I saw no necessity for speaking. The sub- 
ject is being so thoroughly discussed in Congress, in the Legisla- 
tures, in the newspapers, in public meetings, and in private 
discussion, that it does not now seem so necessary to speak of it 
in the pulpit. But such an event as this calls up too many 
thoughts to allow me to be silent ; and I therefore choose for 
my subject, " The Causes and Consequences of the xate 



4 



Afpaie at Harper's Ferry." And I take for my text the 
twentieth verse of the sixth chapter of Mark : 

" And Herod feared John, hnowing that he ivas a just man^ 

An attempt has been made to ascribe this event to the 
teachings of the Anti- Slavery party in this country. Well, 
they are the cause of it, in one sense, just as Samuel Adams and 
Josiah Quincy, James Otis and Patrick Henry were the cause 
of the bloodshed at Lexington and Bunker's Hill ; and just as the 
preaching of Christianity was the cause of the religious wars 
which followed. Whoever opposes tyranny and wrong in any shape, 
with words, will often cause a conflict of deeds to follow. Jesus 
said, '■'■ I came not to send peace, hut a sxvord." He knew that his 
teachings would not be peaceably accepted — would be resisted — 
and that bloodshed would follow. But where rests the responsi- 
bility ? Not on Jesus, though his Gospel has been the occasion 
of war ; not on James Otis and Patrick Henry, though their 
words were the occasion of war ; not on those who oppose evil, 
but on those who maintain and defend it. Therefore, not on 
Anti-Slavery teaching, but on Pro-Slavery teaching. North and 
South, on the men and newspapers, in Washington and Boston, 
who unite with the oppressors to put down Freedom and quench 
its light in the blood of its advocates ; on these and such as these 
rests the responsibility of this tragedy. 

I. — The first cause of this sad aff"air is Slavery itself. 

There is an " irrepressible conflict " between Freedom and 
Slavery. The opposition is radical and entire ; there can be no 
peace nor permanent truce between them, till one has conquered 
the other. Either Slavery is right or it is wrong. The radical 
question is this : — Can one man belong to another, as his proper- 
ty, or not ? To this question there can be but two answers — Yes 
or No. There is no intermediate answer. 

To this question the whole country formerly said No. North 
and South, every one used to say that Slavery was wrong. The 
great minds at the South — Washington, Jeff'erson, Patrick Henry, 
Madison, Monroe, Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina — all 
believed that Slavery was wrong in principle and bad in its 
influence, and must gradually come to an end. The evidence of 



this is ample. One fact I will mention. The territory north and 
west of the Ohio was consecrated to Freedom and secured against 
Slavery by a proviso, passed by the votes of southern as well as 
northern statesmen. When, afterwards, the people of the Terri- 
tory of Indiana petitioned Congress to be allowed to hold Slaves 
for a time, on account of the difficulty in procuring free labor, 
their petition was reported adversely upon, by a committee, the 
chairman of Avhich was Randolph of Virginia, who said, " They 
will thank us hereafter for rejecting their petition." 

At that time all admitted that Slavery, in its principle and in 
the abstract, was wrong ; and all said, "We expect, by degrees 
and gradually, to put an end to it." 

There was no war then between Slavery and Freedom ; no 
" irrepressible conflict ;" for all were on the side of Freedom. 

But time passed by and Slavery did not come to an end. The 
immense expansion in the consumption of cotton, and its increas- 
ing price — the demand always overlapping the supply — made its 
culture the most profitable work done in America ; and this work 
was most easily and cheaply done by Slaves. At the end of a gen- 
eration from the death of Washington, Slavery had become vastly 
more profitable in the Southern States than it was in his days. 
Now, the South did not wish Slavery to come to an end. It 
wished it to continue. I do not say that the Slaveholders were 
worse in this than other people. Their misfortune was to be 
exposed to a tremendous temptation, and they yielded to it. The 
people of New England might have yielded too, if they had been 
exposed to that temptation. 

This was. the first great change ; this the essential change ; this 
change of desire and wish — all the rest has followed that. For, 
though single men are illogical and inconsistent, mankind is logi- 
cal and consistent. In the long run, people will either act as they 
believe, or else believe as they act. The Slaveholders were be- 
lieving one way, but determined to act another. The situation 
was painful, and they broke away from it. Never was such a 
revolution in opinion as that Avhich has taken place at the South 
within the last twenty years, on the subject of Slavery. Twenty 
years ago, nine Slaveholders out of ten would tell you they thought 
Slavery wrong ; to-day, nine out of ten will tell you they think it 
right. So logical is man. As they made up their wills to 
extend, and not abolish Slavery, they presently made up their 



minds to believe it right, and not wrong — a Christian Institu- 
tion ; a missionary enterprise ; based on the Bible, and in 
accordance with the highest principles of duty. 

I know very well that there was a transition period. While 
this great change of public opinion was going on, it was covered 
up and concealed with fine phrases. This was the period of what 
Bentham calls " Fallacious Designations.'''' Bentham says " the 
object and effect of a Fallacious Designation is to avoid any un- 
pleasant idea that happens to be associated with a person or class, 
and to present to the mind instead an abstraction or creation of 
fancy." Thus, says he. 

Instead of ' Kings or the King,' you say ' The Crown or Throne.' 
" 'Churchmen,' " " ' The Church or Altar.' 

" " ' Lawyers,' " " ' The Law.' 

" 'A Judge,' " " 'The' Court.' 

" ' Rich Men,' " " ' Property.' 

" ' Killing a Man,' " " ' Capital Punishment." 

So in this country we said, 
Instead of ' Slavery,' ' Southern Institutions.' 

" " 'Slaveholders,' ' The South." 

A good deal was accomplished in this way by the Slaveholders. 
Thus, in 1850, when it was proposed to exclude Slavery, by law, 
from the new Territories, it was said in reply, — "The South has 
a right to take its property into tlie territory purchased by its own 
treasure and blood." Translated into plain Saxon English, this 
meant, " Three hundred thousand Slaveholders, in the Slave States, 
rich enough to own, on an average, ten negroes each, insist, against 
the interest of thirteen million in the Free States, of six million of 
Non-Slaveholders in the Slave States, and of three million of 
Slaves, to carry Slaves into territories Avhere there are none now, 
and to have the laws changed to let them do it." Mr. Calhoun 
first established this " Fallacious Designation" of ' The South' in- 
stead of ' The Slaveholders.' And, in his last great speech in the 
United States Senate, he carried it so far as to complain that in 
the annexation of new territory to the Union, " the Nortli had 
obtained more than the South," — not meaning that more territory 
situated at the North had been annexed, but that more had been 
secured to Freedom than to Slavery. 

In the same way, in the Free States, wc always have had a party 
who wish to cover up and conceal the radical opposition of 



Slavery to Freedom, and Freedom to Slavery ; to daub the wall 
with untempered mortar — to cry peace when there is no peace. 
They also make great use of these "Fallacious Designations." 
They say ' Our Southern Brethren ; ' meaning, not the four 
million Slaves, nor the six million Non- Slaveholders at the South, 
but the three hundred thousand Slaveholders only. 

But logic is too strong for phrases. Those who wish to post- 
pone the deluge till their time is past, and to leave it as a legacy 
to their children and grand- children, find themselves more and 
more helpless in the increasing earnestness of the hour. The two 
parties, consisting of those who believe Slavery right and those 
who believe it ^\Tong, are like the upper and the nether millstone ; 
small, compared with the great bags' and heaps of corn lying near 
them, but destined to go round and round tiU they have ground 
it all to powder. 

Those who believe Slavery right, labor to fortify, extend, and 
strengthen it. They have passed the Fugitive Slave Law, defeated 
the Wilmot Proviso, repealed the Missouri Compromise, obtained 
the Dred Scott decision, and have determined next to re-open the 
African Slave Trade, and annex Cuba. No phraseology about 
" Our Southern Brethren," or " Safety of the Union," can conceal 
these facts. 

On the other hand, there is a party which hold Slavery to be 
wrong. They hold it to be a wild and guilty fantasy that man 
can claim property in man. With John Wesley, they consider 
Slavery to be the sum of all villany. Holding this, they believe 
that the Slave has a right to assert his freedom whenever he can do 
so ; he has a right to take possession of himself with the strong hand 
if he can. That which he has a right to do we may lawfully help 
him do, if we violate no other right in doing it ; and we cannot 
lawfully oppose his doing it in any case. For the Slave either 
belongs to his master or to himself. If he belongs to his master, 
he is a thief if he tries to escape. If he belongs to himself, his 
master is a thief if he tries to keep him, and we are kidnapping 
if we assist his master in taking him. When Anthony Burns 
was taken down State Street, and the people on each side hoarsely 
roared "kidnappers! kidnappers!" at the soldiers who guarded 
him — their faces showed that they felt the truth of the charge. 
We may wear on our hat the cockade of the United States Mar- 
shal, or we may be called out as a military company, covered with 



8 



feathers and gold lace, but that does not vacate the principle. 
We are kidnappers and man-stealers still. 

Here is the irrepressible conflict — which may be concealed 
under heaps of Avords, smothered by fine phrases, hidden by the 
exigencies of trade, of party politics, of sectarian ecclesiasticism — 
but which, like fire which you try to put out with mountainous 
heaps of straw, burns on and on till it breaks forth at last in a 
wide, destroying flame. 

Here is the fundamental and primary cause of the Harper's 
Ferry afi"air — the antagonism between Slavery and Freedom. 
Any one who believes that Slavery is right must logically regard 
John Brown as a robber and brigand. But those who believe 
Slavery wrong ; who justify the American Revolution ; who admire 
Washington for contending with sword and fire against the gov- 
ernment of Britain to free an oppressed people ; who eulogize 
Lafayette for coming to aid us in that struggle ; must believe John 
Brown to be a hero, and the martyr to a principle. The only 
ground on which they can find fault with him is for attempting 
prematurely what he had not power to accomplish ; that is, for an 
error of judgment as regards means. It is true that no man has 
a right to encourage in any way a Revolution unless there is good 
reason for believing that it will succeed. The best cause will not 
authorize life to be needlessly thrown away. If a man thinks he 
sees enough good in prospect to justify him in throwing away his 
own life, he may do so on his own responsibility — but he ought 
not to waste the blood of others. But Brown did not mean to act 
recklessly — his character forbids that supposition. He was mis- 
taken then — he erred in judgment as to what he could efi'ect. 
He did not intend an insurrection, he says, but only an escape of 
fugitives. He is a man of truth, and I believe him. 

II. — The second cause of this afi'air is False Conservatism at 
the North. 

It is not with the purpose of retaliating charges made against 
Anti-Slavery men, but to express a conviction I have held for 
years, that I say, — if the dark problem of Slavery finds a 
bloody solution — that blood will cry from the ground against 
those who, for years, have been steadily laboring at the North to 
let down the sentiment of Freedom — the Traitors at home who 
tave given moral aid and comfort to the Slave-power. Had it not 



been for these, we should have resisted successfully the Annexation 
of Texas, or passed the Wilmot Proviso, or defeated the Fugitive 
Slave Law, or the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The 
Slave-power, defeated on these points, would hdve ceased from its 
ae'^ressions ; the lovers of Freedom at the South would have been 
encouraged ; the border States would have been led to take meas- 
ures for emancipation. Gradually, peacefully, and joyfully the 
cause of Freedom would have grown strong, that of Slavery weak 
— until, at last, surrounded by the hosts of Free labor, by emi- 
grants from the North, by invading light and advancing religion ; 
hemmed in by all this illumination and warmth, like the scorpion 
girt with fire, it would have turned its sting against itself — 

The sting it nurtured for its foes, 
Whose venom never yet was vain, 
Gives but one pang and ends all pain. 

But as if on a steamer, running at high pressure, men should 
be frightened at the noise made by escaping steam and so shut 
down the safety-valve and call the silence safety — so with us, 
these quietists thinlc all danger to arise from noisy Anti-Slavery 
'people at the North, and try to stop that noise. They think the 
danger, not from Slavery, but from talking about it ; and so are 
themselves the cause of the evil they try to shun. 

HI. — The third cause of this Harper's Ferry tragedy is to be 
found in the low condition of the Religion of the country. 

In such a conflict as that between Slavery and Freedom, Christ- 
ianity, organized in churches, embodied in Christian men and 
women, should have come forward, to speak the Truth in Love. 
Holding fast to the Eternal Law of God, rising high above all 
considerations of mere expediency ; it should have declared God's 
word supreme — above all politics, all legal enactments, all State 
necessity. Man, made in the image of God, cannot be the slave 
of his brother man. Proclaiming this, it should also have uttered 
it in love ; with sympathy for the Slaveholder as well as the 
Slave ; with perception of his difficult and dangerous position, of 
his strong temptations, and with an earnest desire to aid him by 
common sacrifices. 

Unfortunately, little of this has been done. On the one side 
the supremacy of God's law has not been maintained, but we 
2 



10 

have been tauj^ht from a thousand pulpits that man's lower law 
must be obeyed and not the law of conscience : on the other 
hand, Vv-hen the truth has been uttered, it has not been always 
uttered in love to the Slaveholder, but often in bitterness, sarcasm, 
and contempt. In saying this I do not refer to professed Aboli- 
tionists alone. I think that we are always in danger of being 
unjust to those whom we do not personally know. It is not easy, 
at this distance, to be just to Slaveholders. But certainly there 
has often been a hard cold tone of invective used against the 
South ; which is unjust, because it does not recognize their 
difficulty and their efforts ; unchristian, because it does not feel 
toward them as to brethren. 

The opposers of Slavery have sometimes opposed it more in the 
spirit of Elijah than in that of Christ — with fierce rebuke, with 
wild invective ; and at last, as in the present instance, with the 
sword and rifle. 

John Brown has been taught Christianity by a Church, which, 
binding up in one volume the Old and New Testament, calls them 
both the Christian Bible, and gives equal authority to the one as 
to the other. He is an Old Testament Christian ; a Christian 
Avho believes in the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. Bred a 
Calvinist of the strictest sect in Connecticut, and holding firmly 
to his faith, he shares all the great and noble qualities that faith 
has so often produced, together with its frequent alloy. He is 
such a man as Calvinism produced in the Scotch Covenanters, in 
the men of Cromwell's Ironside Regiment, who did not do the work 
of the Lord negligently at Naseby and at Worcester. To this is 
added a touch of chivalric devotion and inspired enthusiasm, 
such as nerved the arm of the Maid of Orleans and of Charlotte 
Cord ay. 

Let me give you an authentic anecdote of his strict and impar- 
tial sense of justice. Some years ago, when living in Western 
Pennsylvania, or on the Ohio Reserve, he found a man whom he 
believed to be a horse-thief. He arrested him and took him to 
jail. The man was convicted and sent to prison. But while he 
was in prison, John Brown furnished the man's family with pro- 
visions and clothing. The man had committed a crime, and 
Brown's sense of justice required that he should be punished. 
His wife and children had not committed any crime, and Brown's 
sense of justice would not allow them to be punished for another's 



11 



fault. The man who told this storj^ is now Sheriff, I thinks ill 
Crawford County, Pennsylvania, and was at that time a boy in 
Brown's family, and was himself sent to town to buy flour and 
carry it to the house of the convict. 

These are the three causes of this tragedy : — First, the radical 
hostility growing ever stronger between Slavery and Freedom. 
Secondly, the false Conservatism at the North, which, dividing 
our strength, has prevented Freedom from crushing the propa- 
gandism of Slavery in the bud. And, Thirdly, a Christianity 
which could not speak the truth with power, and at the same 
time with love. These three causes will produce the like effects 
again, only more terrible, unless some help comes from God's 
providence and man's fidelity. 

Let us sec if such help is likely to come. What will be the 
consequences of this affair ? 

I have heard it said that there will be no marked result from 
this event ; that the waves will close over the head of this mis- 
guided but honored champion of the forlorn, and that in six 
months the world will scarcely remember him or his actions. 

I cannot think so. To me this event seems freighted with con- 
sequences. It is like the clock, striking the fatal hour — the 
hour of the beginning of a new era in this conflict. There is 
something solemn, something ominous in this transaction. While 
we are talking, arguing, making speeches, having Anti-Slavery 
fairs and Anti-Slavery pic-nics ; here is this old man, with his 
sons, taking his life and their lives, and going calmly forward to 
strike a blow at the heart of this system. You may call it mad- 
ness, insanity — what you will — but it is the madness of Curtius 
leaping into the gulf Avhich yawned in the forum ; the insanity of 
the Roman Consul, who, dedicating himself to the infernal gods, 
plunged alone and in full armor into the ranks of the enemy, as a 
sacriflce for his nation. 

It is the madness of Arnold of W^inklericd, gathering into his 
bosom the deadly sheaf of spears — the madness of the three hun- 
dred who went to die at Thermopylae — of the six hundred who rode 
into the Jaws of Hell, to perish in vain, because it was their duty 
to do and die. It is a kind of insanity of which a few specimens 
are scattered along the course of the human race — and wherever 
they are found, they make the glory of human nature, and give us 



12 



more faith in God and man. Such men die, but their act lives 
forever — 

Their memory wraps the dusky moimtaiii, 
Their spirit sparkles in the fountiiin, 
The meanest rill, the mightiest river, 
Eolls, mingling with theh fame forever. 

You cannot get away from it. Call it fanaticism, folly, madness, 
wickedness — it rises before you still Avith its calm, marble fea- 
tures, more terrible in defeat and death than in life and victory — 
the awful lineaments of Conscience. It is one of those acts of 
madness which History cherishes, and which Poetry loves forever 
to adorn with her choicest Avreaths of laurel. 

One consequence of the event will be, I cannot but think, the 
arousing of the nation's conscience. A thoroughly conscientious 
act awakens conscience in others. I have already mentioned its 
eficct at the South. It has commanded respect where we might 
have expected violence. The quality of courage and nobleness in 
the man, in all his words and his whole manner, have evidently 
produced a most extraordinary impression. No bravado, no 
timidity — no concealment, no ostentation — perfect manliness, 
truth, and honesty, have been so conspicuous, that these qualities 
h^ve touched the higher natures of Southern men, and awakened 
genuine feelings of respect and admiration. The Slaveholders have 
at last seen, face to face, a specimen of their "bete noir" — an 
Abolitionist. They find themselves compelled to respect him. 
Governor Wise now knows what an Abolitionist is ; and finds him 
not a man wishing to murder women and children ; but tender to 
noncombatants, careful of his prisoners' lives, doing no needless 
harm, but knowing no such thing as fear. Our text says that 
'•'•Herod feared John, hnoiving him to he a just man." This is one 
of those wonderful touches which mark the insight of the Scrip- 
ture. The tyrant on his throne, surrounded by liis soldiers, backed 
by the miglity power of Kome, was afraid of the prophet in his 
prison — afraid of him in his tomb — "knowing him to be a just 
man." The awful majesty of Justice penetrated through guards 
and courtiers, ante-rooms and festival chambers, and caused a 
thrill of terror to pass through the monarch's soul. So the Herod 
of Slavery fears John Brown, in his prison ; will continue to 
fear him, in his tomb — "knowing him to be a just man."' 



1! 



Ten thousand Southern pulpits have been proving that because 
Abraham held Slaves, and Paul sent back Onesimus, therefore it 
is no violation of the golden rule to work negroes to death oh the 
rice plantations of South Carolina and the sugar coast of the ]\Iis- 
sissippi. Ten thousand able editors, popular orators, and philo- 
sophic professors have been proving the same thing from statistics, 
ethnology, and anatomy. But here comes Old John Brown, be- 
lieving Slavery a sin, and believing it so much as to fling his life 
away ; and in their hearts and souls, the reverend and learned 
arguers feel that they are sophists, with no truth in them. 

When such a deed is done, it is not the actual deed, but that 
which it announces, that is terrific. How many more John Browns 
may there not be behind? — so say in their souls to-day the whole 
population south of Mason's and Dixon's Line. This may be only 
the first drop of the coming shower. True, the whole writing and 
speaking public at the North disavows and condemns the deed, 
but what do those think of it, who, like John Brown himself, do 
not talk, but act? I cannot tell — neither can you. I know that 
great crimes and great virtues are contagious. Suicide is conta- 
gious. jNIurder is contagious. It may be that many a man, 
sitting comfortably in his easy chair, when he read the account, 
" wished himself accursed he was not there " too. We may be 
to-day on the brink of a civil war. A crusade is attractive to 
thousands, whether it be in the form of fillibustering against 
Cuba, invading Kansas from Missouri, invading Missouri from 
Kansas, following Peter the Hermit to Palestine, or following 
other John Browns into Virginia. I do not believe in these 
crusades, any of them. I think them all bad and wrong. But 
woe to the man by whom the offence cometh. 

A better result than this will be the swift depiction of the bor- 
der States of their Slaves, and the turning of them into the ranks 
of the Free. The Governor of Virginia already announces that no 
Slaves can be kept near the border who wish to escape. And 
one reason why no Slaves joined in this insurrection is, no doubt, 
that most of those who wished Freedom had already gone away. 
If the blow had been struck further south, it might have had a 
diflferent effect on the Slave population. 

There is a sad day before us. We shall be obliged to wait in 
silence, knowing that the soul of this hero is departing from the 
scaflbld to the invisible world. But as the motive sanctifies the 



14 



action, so it also glorifies the doom. The man Avill go to his 
death in tlie same great spirit in which he has thus far spoken 
and lived. Could his life be spared, I should be grateful ; if not, 
I must remember 

That whether on the scaffold high, 

Or in the battle's van, 
The fittest place for man to die 

Is where he dies for man. 

One lesson let us not fail to gather. Tlie only thing of mucli 
worth in life is the spirit in wliich a man acts. Not what wc do, 
but the motive of the action, is the great thing. Since this affray, 
and the deaths at Harper's Ferry, there has been a violent and 
extensive conflict at the polls at Baltimore, and perhaps as many 
men killed. But Mdio thinks of that ? Who cares for it ? Who 
knows anything about it ? The motive Avas ignoble, a mere 
political squabble ; and they who were killed died like dogs. But 
here the motive was noble, and they who were shot down, figlit- 
ing for it, fell like martyrs, and lie soiled with no unbecoming 
dust. 

The times are dark, and may become darker. I do not expect 
much from political parties, or from popular elections. But I 
have faith in the Divine Providence — faith in the comino: Kine;- 
dom of Jesus Christ — faith that He, the Master, shall yet come 
to reign in hearts grateful for his love, and in minds submissive to 
his will. And, returning from the contemplation of these events, 
marching by us in the steady progress of history, to our own pri- 
vate life and duty, let us imitate the conscience and the devotion 
to right of all these heroic souls, and seek also for the faith in a 
Divine Love which shall sweeten the harsh rebuke with charity, 
and warm our souls with a hope full of everlasting peace and joy. 
Condemning all violence, bloodshed, and war, let us overcome evil 
with good, and, whenever we speak the Truth, speak it also in 
Love. 



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